Rand Paul to talk immigration, spending cuts in Tea Party response

GOP Sen. Rand Paul plans to extend a welcoming hand to immigrants and chastise both political parties for spending too much in his remarks Tuesday night aimed at countering President Obama's State of the Union Address.

Paul, a Kentucky senator with presidential aspirations of his own, will be speaking to the Tea Party Express, one of the larger groups in the small-government, anti-tax movement. His remarks will follow the official Republican response to be delivered by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla, another Tea Party favorite.

"We are the party that embraces hard work and ingenuity, therefore we must be the party that embraces the immigrant who wants to come to America for a better future," Paul will say in a speech to the Tea Party Express. "We must be the party who sees immigrants as assets, not liabilities."

Paul's comments were obtained by CNN and posted in the PoliticalTicker blog.

On the issue of spending - a subject dear to the Tea Party movement - Paul is expected to criticize Republicans and Democrats for being "guilty of spending too much, of protecting their sacred cows" and for "backroom deals in which everyone up here wins, but every taxpayer loses."

The comments come as a March 1 deadline approaches for automatic spending cuts to kick in on a host of domestic programs, especially the Defense Department. These cuts are known as the sequester.

This is the third time that the Tea Party Express has hosted its own State of the Union response. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain have also talked to the group after Obama's remarks.